Today’s Miami Herald reports that Gov. Jeb handcuffs state agencies’ requests for money from lawmakers. Despite a state law to the contrary.
An open secret in Tallahassee is now hanging like dirty laundry in the public domain. And just like the typical cases in peoples’ homes, it all tumbled out of the laundry bag during an angry meeting in Miami between state legislators and juvenile justice officials.
Herald reporter, Carol Marbin Miller writes,
The legislators have questioned over the past three years why [Department of Juvenile Justice] DJJ guards are poorly trained, don’t have enough radios, and why surveillance equipment designed to protect both guards and children often doesn’t work.
Lawmakers wanted to know, “Why haven’t you DJJ officials asked for sufficient funding for your department?”
Randy Ball, an aide in the governor’s office opened the lid on the hamper when he said, in effect, “DJJ Secretary Anthony Schembri’s hands are tied.”
Then he dropped the bombshell,
“We told him he could not request additional training dollars yet,” Ball added. “He tried, and it’s not his fault he failed.”
Guess that makes it Jeb’s fault. And it’s no wonder lawmakers were angry.
Rep. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat and frequent agency critic, called the revelation that Bush was censoring his agency heads’ budget requests “a dirty little secret.”
“What’s the line from Casablanca? ‘I’m shocked to hear that gambling is going on here!’ That’s almost how I felt,” Gelber said. “The legislative branch is supposed to be doing this” oversight, he said, adding that lawmakers in recent years had been “a little more subservient than they ought to be.”
Yeah, well that’s a US Congressional fault, too. The Tide needs to sweep through and clean the poxes out of both houses.
While a spokesman for the governor tried to put the soiled underwear back in the hamper
by saying that all agency heads follow the law, which says state agencies’ budget requests are to be “based on the agency’s independent judgment of its needs.”
Folks in Florida will tell you that:
It has long been suspected in the Capitol that Bush’s agency heads have submitted budget requests that won’t conflict with the governor’s own budget recommendations given to legislators just before the start ot the annual legislative session.
Cleaning up dirty laundry in political circles usually requires that bucks get passed from one entity to another. Think of it as running around the laundromat trying to decide which machine to put your coins in. And Florida’s Capitol Hill types are no exception.
The question of which government branch was setting policy came up again when lawmakers complained that Bush had vetoed a $2.7 million request to pay for electronic monitoring devices and probation officers so that some delinquent children can await trial on home detention, rather than in often-crowded detention centers.
Then the poor laundry lackey really put his foot in the suds when trying to soak the folks in Miami.
Ball told the committees, however, that the governor believes it is the responsibility of local governments to pay for juvenile detention initiatives — not the state.
No one asked him whether or not it is true that the Department of Juvenile Justice is a State agency. Guess they figured the poor guy had already been put through the wringer.
